


Than gaze on all the troops in Lydia

by THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE



Category: The Shadow Campaigns - Django Wexler
Genre: F/F, Post-Series, Swearing, spoilers for The Guns of Empire, this is cute lesbian nonsense with a minimum of pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 12:12:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7757401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE/pseuds/THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's time enough, now, to build a better world. All you need is someone to help see you through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Than gaze on all the troops in Lydia

It had been long enough that Cyte no longer flinched at the sound of summer thunder rumbling to the north of the city. The rattle of raindrops against the leaded windows of her garret didn’t make her think of canister any more, and she could almost – _almost_ – read Verilucian’s account of the wars of the Mithradacii without smelling blood and shit and powder, without hearing the screams of her friends as they bled slowly into the torn earth.

She took a deep breath, taking in the scent of ink and paper, and fought down the ghosts. She wasn’t standing in a Velt field, or sitting a horse atop a hill in Murnsk, watching cannons flash and musket balls tear her friends apart. She was in Vordan City, two blocks down from the University, in a flat as far up the building as you could be without actually being in the attic.

 _The war is over_. _We won_.

Outside, a carriage rattled up and stopped. Farther off, some drunk student hollered to let the world know that Dog-Botherer Is A Scag. Cyte’s watch ticked the seconds by.

She bent back to her work. The poems were fragmentary, kept in some archive of the University somewhere since the days of Farus IV. Before that, so far as she could tell, they’d been in a monastery somewhere.

_And that place had a damn leaky roof._

It was good poetry, some of the best she’d found from the Vanadii era. Simple, but beautiful. Some of it was commentary, of a sort, on the great epics of the time. Some was… different.

A knock sounded at the door, making Cyte jerk up in her seat. She hadn’t exactly been expecting any visitors. The only people who might want to come and see her would likely send a messenger ahead.

She had a sudden vision of black masks, glittering with obsidian, and of dark leather coats in the night. Granted, it was early afternoon, even if the rain had deadened the light, but still…

Cyte opened her desk drawer and picked up the pistol. She loaded it with the speed of practice, as whoever was outside knocked again. She left it at half-cock, though. She was probably just being paranoid, and there was no reason to shoot a messenger.

Her door had lock, deadbolt and chain; she unshot the bolt and unlocked the door, her hand barely shaking, then turned the handle. The door only opened an inch or so, and Cyte readied herself to jump back and put a ball through the thin wood.

She gasped, eyes widening, then shut the door and scrabbled at the chain. It came unlatched after a few second’s frantic work, and she had just enough presence of mind to put the pistol down on a standing table before wrenching the door back open and throwing herself outside.

“Winter!”

“Oof!”

Cyte’s momentum carried them both two steps back into the opposite wall of the narrow hallway. They hit with a thud, and Cyte heard Winter’s breath hiss out.

_… maybe I shouldn’t have jumped at her like that._

“Hello,” Winter croaked after a moment of stillness.

“Hi,” Cyte said, her face burning. Her voice was muffled by Winter’s neck. “I, um. Didn’t expect you.”

“I thought I’d surprise you,” Winter said, her arms curling around Cyte’s waist. “Maybe that was a bad idea.”

Cyte raised her head, concern welling up. _Did I hurt her?_

Winter’s eyes — not quite the blue of sapphires, Cyte had always thought, but more like the sky of a balmy summer’s day — sparkled with mirth. She moved forward, snake-fast, and kissed Cyte.

Cyte was only a little ashamed of the sigh she let out into Winter’s mouth, or the way she melted into Winter’s hands. The kiss went on for a long time, or it seemed to. Eventually, though, Winter pulled away. She was grinning, the expression lifting war-earned years off her face.

“It’s good to see you, too,” she said, and Cyte giggled.

 _It’s incredible_ , some deep part of her mind wondered, _how she manages to make me feel like a blushing teenager_. That same part of her mind then threw up a card:

“Oh, um… would you like to come in?”

Winter chuckled.

“It might be better for your landlord’s propriety,” she said, letting go of Cyte.

“He rents out rooms to students,” Cyte replied. “I’d be surprised if he still has any propriety.”

She pulled Winter by the hand through the door, closing it behind them.

“I didn’t realise you were in the city,” she said. Winter rubbed at the back of her neck.

“Marcus called me in to give a speech to the Deputies about the reorganisations to the army,” she said. “And since I was in the city anyway…”

Her smile was half-shy, almost teasing, as if she still couldn’t believe her relationship with Cyte. Cyte found herself grinning and moving closer.

“Well, I’m glad you decided to stop by,” she said, and planted a kiss on the tip of Winter’s nose before turning back to the desk.

“Um, Cyte?”

“Hmm?”

“Your shirt—”

“Oh.”

Cyte looked down, her brain finally catching up to the signals her skin was sending. Winter had spent some time in the rain between her carriage door and Cyte’s building. Her coat –- a deep forest green that contrasted wonderfully with her eyes — was soaking wet. Cyte had given her a full-body embrace. Therefore, Cyte’s shirt was now soaking wet.

“You didn’t notice?” Winter asked, her eyes sparkling with mirth.

“No,” Cyte replied, and again felt embarrassed.

 _A pretty girl comes along and I go all to pieces._ She stole a look at Winter through her lashes. She’d shrugged out of her coat and was hanging it on the stand. _A_ very _pretty girl_.

“Well,” Winter said, turning back round. “We have a solution to that, don’t we?”

Her smile — her _smirk_ , an expression Cyte hadn’t thought Winter capable of until recently — would have ruined a saint’s virtue. Cyte blinked, her face reddening, remembering a tent in Murnsk.

“So that’s what you’re here for?” she shot back, almost automatically, grinning.

“No— I mean—” Winter stammered, suddenly awkward. “If that’s— what you want. If not…”

Cyte stepped closer and kissed Winter again.

“I have work,” she said when they stopped, smiling into Winter’s lips. “Not that I resent the invitation, at all.” She took a step away and turned to her wardrobe.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t worry,” Cyte said. She found an old shirt – not washed, but clean enough— and stripped out of the wet one in one smooth motion. She could feel Winter’s gaze on her back, like a soft warmth on her skin. She turned her head and flipped her hair, as coquettishly as she could. “I don’t have any pressing engagements. Once I’m finished…”

Winter had taken a seat on Cyte’s creaky bed. Her mouth was half-open, a slow smile on her lips. There were, Cyte noted with a little pride, two spots of colour high on her cheeks.

“I’m—” Winter started, then seemed to need to take a moment to catch her breath. Cyte grinned, and pulled the other shirt over her head. “I’m not doing anything tonight, either.”

“Well, then,” Cyte said, turning and moving back over to the desk. “It’s good that I can keep you interested.”

Winter laughed, and Cyte wondered whether to kiss her again. _Why not?_

“I thought you had work,” Winter murmured after they broke apart. Cyte grinned and retreated to the desk. Her hair, unbound, fell around her shoulders. Through it, she snuck a glance at Winter. She’d leaned back on the bed and produced a small book from somewhere.

“What is it?” Cyte asked.

“Hmm? Oh, it’s Give-Em-Hell’s memoir. He asked for it to be considered as a teaching text for cavalry officers at the War College.”

“Is it likely to be?” The thought of Vordan’s cavalry all absorbing Give-Em-Hell’s mentality was a somewhat worrying prospect.

“Not likely,” Winter chuckled. “I don’t teach the cavalry officers, but Marcus gave me a veto. I still need to read the damn thing, though.” She leaned back and opened the book, reading by the light of the candle on Cyte’s bedside table.

Cyte smiled, and turned back to the poetry. The scratch of her pen, the rattle of rain on the windows, and Winter’s soft breath ran together into a soft cocoon between her and the world.

Her watched ticked on. More carriages went past; more and more than ever, now that no-one was scouring them clean and driving them north to carry food and ammunition. Occasionally, Winter chuckled or scoffed at something Give-Em-Hell had written. A cat yowled, somewhere. One of the Free Churches tolled the hour. Then, eventually, it did so again, then a third time.

When the church started to toll the fourth hour after Winter’s arrival, Cyte laid her pen down and stretched, feeling her back pop with the motion.

“Finished?” Winter asked, looking up from the book.

“For today,” Cyte replied, working life back into her shoulders. Her shirt, where her fingers rubbed at the fabric, were stained dark with ink.

 _Oops. That’s going to be an arse to get out_.

There was a rustle from the bed, then Cyte felt Winter behind her, strong fingers kneading her back. Cyte sighed, and closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation.

“Better?” Winter asked after a long moment.

“Mmm, yes.”

Winter’s hands skimmed down Cyte’s arms and deftly captured Cyte’s own.

“Careful,” Cyte said. “I have inky fingers.”

Winter giggled, and pressed a kiss to Cyte’s hair. Cyte wiped her fingers on the blotter, then shuffled the papers into something resembling order.

“What are they?” Winter asked.

“I don’t imagine you’re that interested in the minutiae of High Vanadii poetry,” Cyte said.

“No,” Winter replied. “But you are. I like watching you talk about things you’re interested in.”

Cyte was certain her blush could be seen from the street.

“Well,” she said, shuffling through the sheafs until she found the right one, “These are a series of fragments of the poetry of Chaeria of Unnaius.”

“Who was…?”

“She was a poet. One of the greatest of the Vanadii Tyrants’ courts, actually, even though she was Mithradacii. She was born—”

“In Unnaius?”

“Yes,” Cyte continued. “It was destroyed around the same time Saint Ligamenti built Elysium, but it stood around where Antova does now.”

“All right,” Winter said. “What’s so special about these poems”

“They’re about fourteen hundred years old,” said Cyte, mock-severely. “That makes them important. And—” She bit her lip. “I’ve found out something new about them.”

“Something new?” Winter echoed. She was crouching by the desk now, her head level with Cyte’s.

“Yes,” Cyte said, and, despite herself, felt a quiver of excitement when she thought of what she’d found. “We don’t have the full poems she wrote, mostly. Only fragments survive.” She held one sheet up to the light. It held the original fragment, painstakingly copied by dim lamplight from the University’s archives, and Cyte’s translation below that.

“It doesn’t look very long,” Winter said.

“That’s why they’re called fragments,” Cyte said, her voice dry. Winter tilted her head a little, like a fencer accepting a touch.

“This is a hymn of sorts to the goddess of love,” Cyte continued. “In it, she talks about how she’s been overcome by love. The traditional translation was by a priest of the early Church, and it said she’d been overcome with love for a boy.”

“Okay,” Winter said. “What did you find?”

“It doesn’t say ‘boy’,” Cyte said, quietly. Winter furrowed her brow, then blinked. “In any of them,” Cyte continued. “They’re all love poems, or maybe fragments of the same epic.”

“She was—”

“Like us.”

Winter’s expression slowly stretched into a small smile. She turned and kissed Cyte on the cheek.

“You’ll have to read them to me some time,” she said, then raised a hand and cupped Cyte’s jaw, drawing her into a full kiss.

Cyte melted into it, lost herself in the sweetness of Winter’s mouth, in the soft movement of lips and tongue. Eventually — too soon — Winter pulled away.

“What were we talking about, again?” Cyte mumbled, a little breathless.

Winter laughed, pulled Cyte up out of the chair, and guided her over to the bed. They toppled over onto it, exchanging kisses and giggling, panting breaths. Winter broke off and squirmed for a moment, before finding Give-Em-Hell’s book and tossing it to the floor. Cyte spared a worried thought for the book’s binding, but then Winter’s lips were on hers again and Winter’s hands were sliding up the inside of her shirt and all thought not related to those two things left her head.

They shed clothes, fumbling with buttons and clasps and each other’s fingers, laughing and gasping as their limbs twined together. Cyte felt a rush of cold air, then Winter swirled the coverlet over them both, rolling them over on the narrow mattress so she was looking down at Cyte. A lock of white-blonde hair — grown out, slightly, since the end of the war — fell into Winter’s face, and Cyte brushed it away, gently. Winter turned her head and kissed Cyte’s fingers.

“I’m afraid,” Cyte said, cupping Winter’s cheek. “I haven’t been as attentive in my studies as I should be, Doctor-Professor Ihernglass.”

“Not enough translation?” Winter asked, her voice teasing.

“No,” Cyte said, her voice as mock-serious as she could make it. “I don’t know that there’s nearly enough poetry to last us your harvest vacation.”

Winter arched an eyebrow.

“Well then, Cytomandiclea,” she said, leaning down so her breath whispered against Cyte’s face, “You’ll just have to write some more. I’m sure I can provide—” her other hand brushed down Cyte’s hip “— sufficient inspiration.”

Saints and martyrs, the sound and shape of Cyte’s full chosen name, coupled with Winter’s tone, should _not_ set butterflies to fluttering in Cyte’s stomach, or send molten heat to pool at her loins, but… well.

It did.

She kissed Winter again, wrapping her arms around her lover’s neck, and, for a while, there was no need for any words other than Winter’s name, repeated, breathlessly, over and over.

* * *

 

 

Later — when they had exhausted each other, and the rainy world outside had darkened from mid-afternoon to evening — they lay in the light of the guttering candle, dozing in a shared embrace. Winter’s skin was clammy with drying sweat, and Cyte knew her own was no better, but she didn’t want to move. Winter’s arm curled around her shoulders, her fingers idly toying with a tag end of Cyte’s hair. Cyte felt boneless, sated, like a cat basking in the sun.

Winter shifted a little, then let out a pleased hum.

“Are you alright?” Cyte asked, moving to look at Winter’s face.

“I’m fine,” Winter replied, her eyes half-lidded. “I’m very comfortable.”

They lapsed back into silence for a while. Cyte pressed a kiss to Winter’s shoulder. Winter murmured something, her voice sleepy.

“What was that?” Cyte asked.

Winter half-smiled.

“Nothing important.”

“Really?” Cyte said, smiling. “Because I’ve been learning Khandarai with Feor, and that sounded like ‘I love you’.”

Silence, then:

“You didn’t tell me you were learning Khandarai.”

“A girl has to have some mysteries.”

Winter chuckled, voice throaty, and kissed Cyte’s forehead.

“Do you?”

“What?”

“Love me?”

A pause.

“Yes.”

Cyte pressed her face back into Winter’s shoulder. Had she been fully awake, the words would’ve set her heart to bursting. Now, they rolled slowly into the texture of her soul, as lethargic as her limbs. The world was still, in this single moment, utterly at rights.

“Cyte?” Winter said, after another indefinable stretch of time.

“Hmm?

“What are you planning to do, after you graduate?”

Cyte considered the question, letting her thoughts roll into place.

“I don’t know,” she said. “For so long, I’ve just been thinking about surviving the next few days…”

“Me too,” Winter said. Cyte knew Winter had assumed, ever since the Redemption came to Khandar, that at some point her jig would be up and she’d die, to a bullet or blade or fanatical Penitent. Now they were at peace — _true_ peace — and Winter had no idea what she was supposed to do with it.

“Do you want to keep lecturing at the War College?” Cyte asked. Winter sighed.

“Being a soldier…” she said, then stopped, swallowed. “It’s all I know how to do. It’s all I’m good at. But…” Cyte snuck a glance at her. She was biting her lip, as she always did when deep in thought. “I don’t want that to be the only thing I’ve ever done. I want…” She sighed. “I want to leave the world a better place than I found it.

“And… I’ve been thinking. Jane burned Mrs. Wilmore’s down. It’s gone. And that’s good. But Jane’s gang is gone, too. Which means there’s nowhere for girls to go. The ones who don’t have families, I mean. Or the ones whose families don’t want them, or who they can’t live with.” She looked at Cyte. “Am I making sense?”

“Yes,” Cyte said, levering herself up onto one elbow and looking at Winter.

“So… I want to rebuild it. I mean, not rebuild it. But build something like it. A foundling home, or something. A place for girls to go when they have nowhere else. Where they can grow up safe, and— and get the skills they need to live. To feed themselves and work an honest trade. Not be married off to some fucking farmer who liked the sound their entry in the stockbook.” She stopped suddenly, looking away, the ghosts of old pain evident on her face.

“I don’t think she was really evil,” Winter said, after a long silence.

“Who, Jane?”

Winter nodded.

“She wasn’t, she was just… fragile, I suppose. Like jagged glass. If she’d had family who gave half a damn, or a decent home…” Winter’s voice was quiet. “But instead they shoved her into Mrs. Wilmore’s, and that place smashed her up and crushed her down. It did that to all of us, I suppose. And then she got sold off to Ganhide, and he…” She stopped. “I don’t even know what he did to her. I don’t want to know. And then she got out, but she was already half-smashed by then, see? She couldn’t help but snap half the time. And being responsible for all those girls, for fighting the tax farmers… I guess that was about as much as she could really handle. She was okay with that. And then I came back, and the Revolution happened, and her girls were marching into smoke and cannonfire, and I was a different person. It broke her, and she never got back.”

Winter blew out a breath.

“I don’t want that to happen to anyone else. If I can stop other girls from going through what Jane went through — what _I_ went through…” She ran a hand through her hair. “It’s probably a stupid idea. There must be thousands of lost girls in Vordan. I can’t help them all.”

There was a long silence, as awe and adoration warred in Cyte’s heart. She felt it as an almost physical pressure at the base of her throat, as if she were about to cry. _Maybe I am. Because of her._

“Winter…”

“I know, I know. It’ll never work.”

“ _Ai tzhe hael,_ ” Cyte said, borrowed words from ancient poetry leaving her in a rush. “It’s…”

“Stupid, impractical, foolish…”

“ _Beautiful_ ,” Cyte said. She cupped Winter’s cheek and kissed her, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.

“Cyte? What’s wrong?”

“All that pain,” Cyte said. “All that grief. All the things you’ve seen, and suffered. And you’re still _kind_. _Ai tzhe hael_ ", she said again, because there were no other words. “It’s a wonderful idea.”

Winter blinked. She looked stunned.

“You really think so?”

“ _Yes._ ” Cyte said, vehemently. “You see something that tore you up and spat you out, and you want to rebuild it better so it can actually help people.” She smiled. “Forget speeches in the deputies and shouting about the constitution. That’s why we had a revolution. To build a better country.”

“That’s why _you_ had a revolution,” Winter said, in a teasing voice that was undercut by how thick her voice was with emotion. “I only went along with it to stop people getting themselves killed.”

“Well, I’m glad you did,” Cyte said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have met.” She kissed Winter again, slow and languorous.

“Anyway,” she murmured against Winter’s skin. “We wouldn’t have to stop at one home. If we wanted to do it right, we’ll need to secure funding from the deputies, but that shouldn’t be hard, what with you being a war hero. Helping wayward girls should play well, especially if Raes backs it, which she will. We can start with one place and expand outward. Find good people to run them. Give the girls a good education, find them an apprenticeship. We can set up a system to check the schools to make sure the girls aren’t being abused or mistreated. We can—”

“We?” Winter’s voice was small, and so hopeful it almost broke Cyte’s heart.

“Of course I’ll help,” she said. “It’ll be like the army again. You set the course, I’ll handle the small details.”

“You don’t have to—”

Cyte shushed Winter with a finger to her lips.

“I want to, Winter. Did you really think I wouldn’t help you build a better Vordan?”

“I—” Winter’s expression was somewhere between shock and amazement. Cyte kissed her to forestall an answer, then curled closer. They lay like that for a while, listening to the rain.

“It’ll be difficult,” Winter said, quietly.

“What’s worthwhile that isn’t?”

“Loving you.”

Cyte was glad Winter couldn’t see her blush, even if she could feel it against her skin. Another long silence. Then:

“Cyte?”

“Yes?”

“Those words you said, after I explained my idea. What did they mean?”

Cyte smiled against Winter’s skin.

“They’re old Mithradacii. It means ‘I love you’.”

“Oh.”

Winter shifted, drawing Cyte closer. She went willingly, snuggling into Winter’s warm embrace. She heard Winter humming, some old nursery tune that Cyte herself had learned once and never bothered to forget. She curled her arms around Winter, and together they drifted off into a close, dreamless sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Work on "Aria; Scored for Gunfire and Steel" will continue, but I had to write some cute lesbian nonsense to soothe people after the ending of tGoE. Title from Sappho. It seemed appropriate.


End file.
